[pulseaudio-discuss] Hpw to start the pa server

[Gene Heskett]

On Wednesday 14 April 2010, Colin Guthrie wrote:
>'Twas brillig, and Gene Heskett at 14/04/10 16:38 did gyre and gimble:
>> On Wednesday 14 April 2010, Colin Guthrie wrote:
>>> 'Twas brillig, and Gene Heskett at 13/04/10 01:38 did gyre and gimble:
>>>> On Monday 12 April 2010, Colin Guthrie wrote:
>>>>> 'Twas brillig, and Gene Heskett at 12/04/10 20:29 did gyre and gimble:
>>>>>> draksound, re-enabled, was on before by other means, and enabled user
>>>>>> switching.  No sound yet.
>>>>>> pacmd.ls.out attached.
>>>>>
>>>>> Hmm, what is strange here is that it shows no streams at all - e.g. no
>>>>> sink inputs. To back this up, all the sinks are in a suspended state.
>>>>>
>>>>> The volumes are all incredibly high - well over the 100% mark. How
>>>>> were these volumes set? Most tools only allow volumes up to 150%.
>>>>
>>>> I _think_ it was paprefs that allowed me to go as high as 400%.
>>>
>>> Ahh no, I think it was likely paman... it's evil :p Generally speaking
>>> paman and padevchooser are obsolete... I should probably not ship them
>>> really but some people do like them despite their evilness :p
>>
>> paman runs here, padevchooser doesn't output anything, shows a .4%
>> memory usage, and responds to a ctrl+c to quit.
>
>It's an applet that sits in the system tray and shows popups and a
>submenu and stores it's settings in a strange way that conflict with
>normal usage. Don't use it :p
So thats why the system tray cleaned itself up when I killed the last 
padevchooser.

>>> Can you do the following for me:
>>>
>>> 1) Enable PA in draksound and reboot.
>>> 2) Login.
>>> 3) ps aux | grep pulseaudio
>>
>> [gene at coyote gene]$ ps aux | grep pulseaudio
>> root     17772  0.0  0.0 206580  2264 ?        S<sl Apr12   0:00
>> /usr/bin/pulseaudio --start --log-target=syslog gene     22513  0.0  0.1
>> 221408  4904 ?        S<sl Apr13   0:13 /usr/bin/pulseaudio --start
>> --log-target=syslog gene     28277  0.0  0.0   7372   948 pts/6    R+  
>> 10:28   0:00 grep --color pulseaudio
>
>OK, the version running as root is probably cocking things up here. Can
>you find out why it was started and kill it if possible? You'll want to
>do this before logging in as your own user.

Without a reboot, the root session has gone away, didn't change anything 
though.
>
>>> 4) paplay /usr/share/sounds/ia_ora-startup.wav
>>
>> Silence, does take a while to get the prompt back
>
>I suspect the silence is due to the fact that you are now running your
>own PA daemon, but the root users own PA daemon is also running, hogging
>the sound card and not letting your user access it at the same time.
>Running PA as root is a generally bad idea so try to avoid it at all costs.

See above, no root session now exists.

>>> 5) (in a separate terminal, leave running and retry until it starts
>>> properly): pulseaudio -k; pulseaudio -vvvvv
>>
>> All I can get, tried 30-40 times, is
>> [gene at coyote gene]$ pulseaudio -k; pulseaudio -vvvvv
>> I: main.c: setrlimit(RLIMIT_NICE, (31, 31)) failed: Operation not
>> permitted
>>
>> E: pid.c: Daemon already running.
>> E: main.c: pa_pid_file_create() failed.
>>
>> However, executing the above line, does report a connection lost for the
>> line below if its been run. Expected...
>
>Hmm, OK, it seems to autospawn far too quickly for you (machine quicker
>than mine :D).

2.1Ghz quad core phenom, 4Gb of dram.

>>> 6) paplay /usr/share/sounds/ia_ora-startup.wav
>>
>> [gene at coyote gene]$ time paplay /usr/share/sounds/ia_ora-startup.wav
>> 0.03user 0.00system 0:07.75elapsed 0%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata
>> 0maxresident)k 0inputs+0outputs (0major+869minor)pagefaults 0swaps
>>
>>> 7) cat ~/.pulse/client.conf
>>
>> [gene at coyote gene]$ cat ./pulse/client.conf
>> cat: ./pulse/client.conf: No such file or directory
>
>You've got a typo. I said "cat ~/.pulse/client.conf" type exactly that.
Copy/paste from your line ;)
[gene at coyote gene]$ cat ~/.pulse/client.conf
cat: /home/gene/.pulse/client.conf: No such file or directory
both times. ;)

>>> 8) cat /etc/pulse/client.conf
>>
>> [gene at coyote gene]$ cat /etc/pulse/client.conf
>
>Cool. That's what I expect it to be. Ticked off the list :)
>
>>> 9) xprop -root | grep PULSE
>>
>> [gene at coyote gene]$  xprop -root | grep PULSE
>> [gene at coyote gene]$
>
>Thanks. With a normal clean startup process this should contain
>something but running pulseaudio -k or padevchooser can mess it up.
>Being empty is good tho' and should still work fine.
>
>>> 10) env | grep PULSE
>>
>> [gene at coyote gene]$ env | grep PULSE
>> [gene at coyote gene]$
>
>As above. I didn't expect anything to be here, but worth double checking.
>
>> However,
>> [root at coyote Daily]# env |grep pulse
>> CANBERRA_DRIVER=pulse
>> [root at coyote Daily]#
>
>Yeah that's fine (this is actually one of the reasons that PA is
>autospawned so quickly above :D)
>
>>> Just to keep things simple, I'd load up paprefs and untick the box to
>>> create a combined output (it's the last tab IIRC). Then the above sink
>>> wont load which keeps our setup cleaner.
>>
>> Already did, that is the condition for all of the above.
>>
>> And I just tried the "pulseaudio -k;pulseaudio -vvvvv" about 50 more
>> times. Same instantly respawned result every time.  Where do I disable
>> the auto-respawn?
>
>OK, the best bet here is to:
>cp /etc/pulse/client.conf ~/.pulse/client.conf
>
>then edit the latter file and change so "autospawn = no"
>
>This will allow easier debug :)
>
>> I just fired up mcc, went to the screen for audio and ran everything
>> there, getting the expected results except for the last one:
>> [gene at coyote ~]$ /sbin/fuser -v /dev/dsp
>> [gene at coyote ~]$
>> but at this point I have NDI what that means.
>
>That's fine, /dev/dsp is a legacy device node and not much should have
>it open anyway. 99% of apps use either alsa or pulse directly.
>
>> Also, doing that while paplay is running is equally uninformative.
>> But it seems to me we aren't using, or do not have, a tool that will
>> trace the paths being used.
>
>OK, so ultimately I think the next round of debug relates to that root
>process.
>
>In my previous list of numbered steps can you add:
>
> -1) Ensure no root PA daemon is started prior to testing. e.g. do a
>fresh reboot, login and then do ps aux | grep pulseaudio. If there is a
>root process running, just stop right there and let me know. THis is the
>problem and *something* is running on your machine as root that is
>trying to produce sound... this is a bad thing and needs to be solved.
>
> 0) If you just have your own user's PA running, then run the steps
>again. You can skip #8 tho' :)
>
> 1) as before
> 2)    "
> ...)
>
>
>All the best
>
>Col
>
After turning off autospawn, the screen scrape can be seen at
<http://gene.homelinux.net:85/gene/pulseaudio-vvvvv.out>
Lots of 'trailing' white space.  Do we have a tool that will trim that?

Thanks Colin.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
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